Working through my life's nightmare

Day Eight: Pretty good!

Today’s been pretty good and I’ve had quite a bit of extra energy.I don’t want to claim huge results but even a 10% increase in energy for me is palpable and evident.Only a few weeks ago in October I was napping regularly when I could during the day and relying on a coffee a day (somehow in denial and still thinking I’d given up the caffeine) and this was giving me enough energy to carry on for a full day.I thought I was doing pretty well.

My goal has always been to ‘get back’ to where I was before I got sick, and that means no naps.Having said that I had become accustomed to a nap here and there to help me achieve what I wanted.Not for the first time in this process, I’d said to myself ‘I can live like this’.

But it turns out, there was more improvement to be had.The headaches have subsided thankfully.The advice on the Fizz sticks is to not have one after 3pm, some people even claiming they can’t have one after midday, whereas I have one about 4pm and it keeps me going.This might change.I was worried in the first few days that I was becoming dependent on the Fizz stick but that’s passed and I almost forgot to have one this afternoon, which pleased me.I started to feel a little fatigued and thought ‘oh yeah Fizz stick!’.

Now this might not seem amazing, but today I mowed the lawn.I raked up the grass and watered the rest of the garden.I did some work, I collected my daughter, spent an hour doing activity books with her and made a reasonably detailed Jamie Oliver pasta for dinner (it was so yummy/my daughter hated it).And all of that I did without feeling tired.Plus I’ve still got energy and a clear head tonight when I’m writing.I’ve gone from napping on the couch with enormous headaches to plus size energy within a week.And that’s a brilliant result.

Having been through many ups and downs over the last 3 years I am not ready to claim victory yet.I need to continue on the path I’m going and see what the results are like across the whole month.If this continues, I feel like I will have perhaps found the last piece of the puzzle.

A question I’ve been considering whilst embarking on this journey is what is the problem with preparing meals?When did making food get so hard?And is it only me who feels this way?Surely not when you look at the rise in popularity and ubiquity of frozen meals.I notice that my daughter wants to watch TV instead of talk at the dinner table and I can remember that I did too when I was her age.The TV seems so much fun.Perhaps we’re not valuing the food enough, busily wanting to do other things while eating instead of enjoying the meal?Not only that though, the actual preparation of a meal has felt really hard to me for a long time, but I put that down to the brain fog and fatigue.Everything felt hard.There is so much that western society gets wrong… mass produced meals, extensive packaging, food that masquerades as something healthy that just isn’t.What a crazy mixed up way to live we’ve grown to rely on and for what reason?So we can get to the TV faster to binge watch a program?